KonMari and the Power of "How Might We?"
I'm still on my Kondo-ing kick, moving slowly through the proper stages--for the uninitiated, the stages are denial, anger, bargaining...wait, no, that's something else. The stages are clothes, books, papers, komono, and sentimental items. So far I've only done clothes and books, but already I can see how some of the rooms in our house have managed to stay clean for longer than a day, so something must be working.
A premise of the KonMari method is that you should identify what you love, keep only those items, and create a home for each item. That way, you will always know where to put something back when you are cleaning up.
It occurred to me that this is an effective solve for a persistent decluttering problem, and you can imagine it as a "How Might We" question. A "How Might We" (HMW) question helps spark ideas in a brainstorm. If you're met with a design challenge, it helps to ask HMW instead of, "We need something that does X. How do we build it?" HMW lets you ask how you might solve a certain challenge, vs. jumping to a solve and asking how to build it.
Keeping a house decluttered is a major challenge for most people. The first thought for a solve might be, "We need a way to keep our house clean. How do we approach it?" From that, you might arrive at solutions like:
- Let's try room by room
- Let's try a little at a time
- Let's try a monthly cleaning calendar
- Let's try buying storage items that match our stuff
I've tried all of these, and I'm here to tell you that they don't work (At least not for me).
If you step back for a minute and think about decluttering and why its so hard, you might make some observations first. For me, one is "It's a lot harder to clean general spaces than specific spaces." For instance, spaces with multiple uses (family room, bedroom) are more challenging to declutter than a bathroom or a kitchen. Why? For me, its the mental task of looking through all of the seemingly random or sentimental items that have ended up in the family room or bedroom. My brain gets exhausted just thinking about everything on my dresser, and finding homes for all the objects. A bathroom on the other hand, while sometimes unpleasant to clean, is pretty effortless to declutter, because usually everything in the bathroom is relevant to the bathroom. You can turn the organization part of your brain off.
Which leads to a How Might We? for KonMari:
How do we make decluttering a bedroom like decluttering a bathroom?
The answer seems to be, by treating your bedroom objects like bathroom objects. Usually, all objects in a bathroom are relevant to the bathroom, and generally have somewhere that they always live. How amazing would it be if your bedroom was like this? Every item would be accounted for, with a designated home that it would return to. It seems so simple, but I don't see how you arrive there without the "How Might We?"
A premise of the KonMari method is that you should identify what you love, keep only those items, and create a home for each item. That way, you will always know where to put something back when you are cleaning up.
It occurred to me that this is an effective solve for a persistent decluttering problem, and you can imagine it as a "How Might We" question. A "How Might We" (HMW) question helps spark ideas in a brainstorm. If you're met with a design challenge, it helps to ask HMW instead of, "We need something that does X. How do we build it?" HMW lets you ask how you might solve a certain challenge, vs. jumping to a solve and asking how to build it.
Keeping a house decluttered is a major challenge for most people. The first thought for a solve might be, "We need a way to keep our house clean. How do we approach it?" From that, you might arrive at solutions like:
- Let's try room by room
- Let's try a little at a time
- Let's try a monthly cleaning calendar
- Let's try buying storage items that match our stuff
I've tried all of these, and I'm here to tell you that they don't work (At least not for me).
If you step back for a minute and think about decluttering and why its so hard, you might make some observations first. For me, one is "It's a lot harder to clean general spaces than specific spaces." For instance, spaces with multiple uses (family room, bedroom) are more challenging to declutter than a bathroom or a kitchen. Why? For me, its the mental task of looking through all of the seemingly random or sentimental items that have ended up in the family room or bedroom. My brain gets exhausted just thinking about everything on my dresser, and finding homes for all the objects. A bathroom on the other hand, while sometimes unpleasant to clean, is pretty effortless to declutter, because usually everything in the bathroom is relevant to the bathroom. You can turn the organization part of your brain off.
Which leads to a How Might We? for KonMari:
How do we make decluttering a bedroom like decluttering a bathroom?
The answer seems to be, by treating your bedroom objects like bathroom objects. Usually, all objects in a bathroom are relevant to the bathroom, and generally have somewhere that they always live. How amazing would it be if your bedroom was like this? Every item would be accounted for, with a designated home that it would return to. It seems so simple, but I don't see how you arrive there without the "How Might We?"
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